Yahoo Groups

MCRRC uses several yahoo groups to help members keep informed of breaking news, share information with other members, and discuss issues.

mcrrc-alert is for high priority messages. (Track closed this afternoon due to thunderstorms.) Only club board members are allowed to post to mcrrc-alert however all club members are highly encouraged to subscribe to it.

mcrrc-info is for messages requiring little or no group-wide responses (We need more volunteers for this Saturday.Here’s a link to a gallery of photos from last weekend’s race.) Messages that are likely to cause extended discussion should be posted to mcrrc-discuss instead. Replies default to the sender.

mcrrc-discuss is for messages likely to cause extended discussion or lots of public responses. (What’s the best local store to shop for trail shoes?) Replies default to the group. You must be subscribed to mcrrc-info in order to subscribe to mcrrc-discuss.

Some weekly activities and programs also have their own groups. These are either documented on the page describing the activity/program or are provided upon joining the program.

To Subscribe

Click on the Join This Group button on each of the three group web pages. If you do not have a yahoo profile, you will be prompted to create one. You will be prompted to tell the group owner about yourself and why you would like to join. In response, enter your name so we can verify your membership. New members should also provide the approximate date they joined the club, and whether it was online or on paper.

Common Subscription Problems

We usually approve subscription requests within a day or two but offer no specific time guarantees. If you hear nothing within a week, verify the email address associated with your yahoo profile is able to receive emails and is not misclassifying yahoo mail as spam.

It is also possible you are subscribed already but have your delivery preference set incorrectly. Verify your delivery preference is set to Individual Email. (See Preferences below.)

If you continue to have problems, contact the administrator. (See Contact below.)

To Unsubscribe

To unsubscribe, send an email to groupname-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com (where groupname is the name of the group) from the same email address at which you receive mail. If you have a yahoo profile, consider instead setting your delivery preference to Web Only. (See Preferences below.) That way, if you later want to start receiving emails again, you can re-enable it yourself.

Preferences

Various preferences may be set for yahoo groups. Setting preferences (and accessing the archives) requires that you have a yahoo profile associated with your email address. To create a profile, go to any of the groups pages (see above), click on the Sign Up link, and follow the instructions.

Once you have a profile, you can set your preferences by visiting the group website (see links above) and clicking on the Edit Preferences link. The most important preferences are:

Delivery—By default, emails are delivered immediately. However, you may prefer Digest (messages arrive in batches) or Web Only (to read them at the group website).

Formatting—You have a choice of Traditional or Fully Featured. Despite the name, Traditional formatting works best for the way that we use the groups.

Address—Use a personal email address rather than a business email address. All modern mail programs allow you to monitor multiple email accounts so you can still read your MCRRC mail while at work. However, by keeping them separate, MCRRC email won’t get tangled up in corporate policies and you won’t lose access if you change jobs. Similarly, we discourage use of so-called “free” email accounts that are provided by your ISP. These accounts aren’t owned by you and are easily lost. (The most common problem we face is from people losing their email addresses.) It’s worth paying for a personal domain and email provider to own your address permanently and you generally get better service.

Guidelines

The purpose of the groups is to communicate information about running-related issues of interest to MCRRC members. Avoid inappropriate postings. Inappropriate use of our email list will simply drive our members away from the groups.

Advertising and volunteer requests for non-MCRRC events is forbidden except with prior approval of the MCRRC Board. Mentioning non-MCRRC events in a low-key way is ok (“I’m going to the … race, anyone interested in coming with me so we can have a team?”). If you are promoting a race, advertise in our club newsletter or send entry forms to our club address. (See address at bottom of page.)

Post only plain-text messages. HTML or rich-text messages are not rendered consistently from one mail program to another and may not appear the way you intended. (Even simple things like font sizes are non-standard across platforms.) The simplest way to ensure you’re sending plain text is to visit the group page and click on the Post link.

Attachments are not enabled on the groups. As an alternative, post a link to the file. You may upload files to a group website; however, the upload space is limited so other locations are preferred. Microsoft Word is not standard from version to version. Unless you are providing a file to be edited, PDF is always a better choice for attachments. (If you can’t generate PDF, use plain text.)

These groups are a benefit of MCRRC membership. If your membership lapses, you will be removed from the groups after a suitable grace period.

Postings that are annoying to a significant number of other members will result in a member’s postings being moderated—held until a moderator can review them. The definition of annoying is not set in stone but includes offensive language, personal insults, trolling, spam, vacation auto-replies, and public requests to unsubscribe. Moderation lasts until the moderators are convinced it will not happen again.

Use your real name in the From field so that readers know who posted the message. If posting on behalf of someone else, also provide their name and contact info within the body of the message.

Posting the same item to both mcrrc-info and mcrrc-discuss is forbidden (and unnecessary since the set of mcrrc-discuss subscribers is a subset of the mcrrc-info subscribers).

Contact

Questions/complaints about the three groups mentioned above should be sent to ygroup@mcrrc.org. Questions/complaints about program-specific or activity-specific groups should be sent to groupname-owner@yahoogroups.com where groupname is the name of the group. Warning: If you complain about the way the groups are administered, you may find yourself volunteered to replace the current administrator.